1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a system and method supporting commerce syndication. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for computer based information providers to receive outsourced electronic commerce facilities in a context sensitive, transparent manner.
2. Description of Prior Art
The World Wide Web began as a simple interface to the Internet using HTML (hypertext markup language) as a means of linking documents together. This allowed a researcher, for example, to embed “active” references in his or her documents that, if selected, would enable the reader to review the source of the reference first-hand. Programmers quickly capitalized on this technology, creating “web sites” which reflected less staid purposes, laying the groundwork for the literal “web” of content and interactive applications that exists today. In the early stages, website programmers increased visitor traffic by placing “links” within their websites to other websites, usually related in content or function, in exchange for a reciprocal link. Additionally, directories of websites, such as Yahoo, and search engines, such as WebCrawler, began to appear in an attempt to organize the content of the Internet so that its users could create “custom links pages” related to specific topics.
In these early days, the Web was mostly trafficked by programmers and “techies,” and a commune-type “share and share alike” mindset prevailed. As a result, people were happy to litter their sites with links, knowing that, odds were, others would do the same for them and the traffic gain/loss would probably balance out. So, despite the fact that by including and promoting a “links” page, website operators were effectively encouraging people to leave their website, link sharing developed into a standard practice.
Then, entrepreneurs and other business-oriented individuals came along and introduced capitalism to the Internet. Profit-oriented website operators began to seek visitors wherever they could find them, and opportunistic owners of popular sites began to realize that they had an increasingly scarce resource—visitors. Such website owners began to sell the links they had previously offered for free in the form of paid advertisements. Search engines and directories became increasingly popular for two main reasons. First, the number of websites was growing astronomically, so it was becoming harder for users to find what they wanted. Second, since reciprocal links were either going away or were being replaced by links exclusively to non-competing websites, search engines and directories were the only way to find multiple resources for a single topic.
Amid frantic efforts on the part of corporate websites to get noticed, the sale of banner ads blossomed into a large industry called Internet advertising. Thousands of websites created space for banner ads and called the space “inventory.” At first, they priced ads as a print ad might be priced: by CPM, or cost per thousand “impressions” each ad made on website visitors. Over time this pricing model gave way to arrangements more favorable to advertisers such as Cost Per Click-through and Cost Per Inquiry (meaning the advertiser only needs to pay when a visitor sees a banner ad and clicks on it and completes an information request form on the advertiser's site).
Some of the most successful Internet commerce websites, led by online bookseller Amazon.com, have begun to take an even more results-driven approach to the purchase of banner ads. They have offered to pay only for ads that, when clicked, result in a product sale. To provide a stronger incentive than a simple banner ad, these companies let third-party website owners list a subset of their goods (e.g., 10 of Amazon.com's millions of books, selected by the website owner) and promote them as they choose within their websites. Initiatives such as these have come to be described as “affiliate programs”, “associate programs” or “commission based advertising programs”.
The benefits of affiliate programs are significant. To the website owner, they constitute revenue-generating web content without requiring an investment in product inventory or additional infrastructure. They also create new revenues without necessarily reducing the website's available ad inventory. However, the greater benefit almost always accrues not to the affiliate, but to Amazon.com and other online stores. Not only do these sites benefit from the marketing resources of the affiliate operators, they are also able to lure the visitor traffic away from the affiliate. Once a visitor clicks on an affiliate ad and enters an online store, that visitor has left the affiliate's site and is gone. At best, affiliates are able to use “frames” to keep a shell of their own website around the vendor's site, but this is only a marginally effective solution. No alternatives have been able to address a fundamental drawback of the affiliate programs—the loss of the visitor to the vendor. At best, some Internet affiliate sales vendors have begun placing “return to referring website” links on their order confirmation screens, an approach that is largely ineffective. This limitation of an affiliate program restricts participation to less trafficked websites that are unconcerned about losing visitors. Meanwhile, search engines and directories continue to increase in their usefulness and popularity, while banner ads and old-style links continue their rapid loss of effectiveness and popular usage.
The present invention overcomes these limitation of present affiliate commerce systems and provides other benefits as will become clearer to those skilled in the art from the foregoing description.